1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image display system, an image display method and an image display program.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, there has been known an image display system for online shopping using the Internet, where images of a plurality of articles distributed by a web server are thumbnailed as an electronic catalogue on a display of a user terminal, and when a user selects a desired article on the display, a zoomed image and detailed information of the desired article are distributed by the server and displayed (Reference: No. JP-A-2002-133291). Such image display system is generally used in a server providing contents for the Internet and in a user terminal including a web browser in various ways without limiting to the online shopping. Since only an image requested from the user terminal is distributed from the server, data amount is not too large, which is displayed on the user terminal without causing a stressful situation.
As another example, there has been also known an image display system in which images are displayed in a form of a book or a pamphlet on a display of a user terminal, as typified by an electronic book, the system having a page turning function for a virtual page turning operation. In such image display system, images of a book to be displayed are downloaded from a server through the Internet and stored in a storage of the user terminal, and the images are movably displayed so as to be page-turnable using a plug-in software installed in the user terminal. Example of the book includes a bound article catalogue in addition to a normal reading book consisting mostly of characters. The image display system allows users to enjoy a sense of actually reading a book or leafing through a catalogue, gaining favor of the users.
However, since data amount of the images used in an electronic book is huge, it takes long time to download the images, which is stressful for the users. Even in the system disclosed in the above Reference, when a thumbnail image is selected to request distribution of a zoomed image from the web server, it takes some time for the zoomed image to be distributed, so that the zoomed image is not always displayed smoothly.
In the electronic book, although the downloaded image can be zoomed in on the user terminal by a function of the plug-in software, unlike the system disclosed in the above Reference, a clear zoomed image is not distributed separately from the thumbnail image, but the downloaded image having been viewed is simply zoomed in. Thus, image quality of the zoomed image might be degraded significantly depending on magnification or file format (compression format) of the image data.